He had seen people die. He had probably killed someone, which he tried not to remember, but did. And he knew people here on the planet wanted to kill all of them, and that he was obliged to be smarter than most boys.
He was obliged to grow up faster than most boys.
And then people would see what he was.
A Stability could become an Aggressor, quite as well as a Support. He wished people really were afraid of disarranging him and disturbing his life. No one believed he was a threat— well, his father’s enemies might, but people in his household called him a Stabililty. He had rather be an Aggressor, at the moment.
But Bren-nandi said no. Bren-nandi had told him it was better for an aiji to prop things up than to knock them down. Murini was the sort who had knocked things down, and look what it had done, and how badly he had ruledc and everybody wanted him dead. Build.
That was Bren-nandi’s advice.
But he still wished he had his father’s power to break heads of those who had hurt his family. If he were aiji, if he was his father, he would be thinking about that. So was mani thinking about it, and he was well aware that was why everybody was too busy to talk to him as if he had any worthwhile ideas of his own. Mani was more Aggressor than Stability, and she was One, was she not?
But she had dinner with disagreeable people. She was polite. She found time for them, and smiled, even when it was a political smile.
And she had invited Lord Bren, when people there were not well-disposed to him. Why?
She was either a Stability or an Aggressor. Bren-nandi was always a Stability. One could feel the flux settle, when Lord Bren took hold of a situation.
That was a sort of power, too. That was a great and valuable power, was it not?
Nand’ Bren knew his timing to the finest degree. Nand’ Bren spoke, and even his father changed his mind.
So it was not just Aggressors who changed things, was it?
Something occurred to him as he fingered the sketch of the ship and thought about Lord Bren and great-grandmother.
On Bren’s advice, his father had agreed to have atevi go into space. It was his father who had had all the factories built which built modern machines. It was his father who had used television to reach the outlying villages and towns and kept the aishidi’tat informed. It was his father who had seen that if the humans failed to get their affairs in order and establish a stable authority up in the heavens, then disorder would spread in space—and that had led everybody to discovering the trouble at the far station, and rescuing Gene and everyone, and meeting the kyo, and learning about that danger in time to do something. And it was his father’s decision that they were building another starship, one that would belong to atevi, and maintaining an atevi authority on the space station, and using all manner of technologyc So his father might be an Aggressor—aijiin were that. But his father had wanted nand’ Bren’s influence and mani’s both to instruct him in his growing up. His father had gotten him and mani out of the reach of Assassins, seeing danger coming. His father was behind all sorts of change and technology which had brought on the trouble. So his father took chances.
And valued technology. And nand’ Bren.
So it was not like arguing with uncle Tatiseigi, who deplored everything new just because it was new.
So living with his father was not quite like being in Tirnamardi.
Mani had said there should be no televisions under her roof.
Where mani came from, in the East, things were very kabiu, and proper, and people were more interested in the traditions, like Uncle Tatiseigi.
But if Father were running the apartment, well, he could just possibly ask for a television, and maybe a computer, could he not—he could tell Father how he had learned to use the computers on the ship and he needed to keep his skills in practice, and he could tell Father how he needed books. There was the whole human Archive, over on the island, or at least up in space, on the ship, if he could get it. And that would bring movies. He ached to have movies again.
And there was a world of things on the ship that were just more convenient, that they could set up, like the kind of communications he knew Banichi and Jago and Cenedi and Bren himself had brought down in their luggage— Communications which had proved so much better than Uncle’s, and saved their lives, besides. His father would not disapprove of that. His father might be impressed if he knew his son could use computers as well as he could. His father would think it was a very good thing for his son to have learned.
Things could be different with his father in charge.
Not to mention Father might let him fly with Dur’s son in the yellow airplane.
Father was very close with Lord Bren, so he would be seeing Bren often, too. That was not so bad. If Bren was staying in Great-uncle’s apartment, that was just down the hall.
And if his father gave him computers and keys and permissions and the like, so might his mother, who might be easier to approach in some respects. Then getting places and getting information might be a great deal easier. His father would be the one to approve his going to the library, and “going to the library” could cover a lot of territory, besides that he would bet the library Jegari and Antaro had talked about had more than one door.
So it was not quite that he was about to be locked into an apartment with his father and kept like a prisoner. He was gaining access to someone who could get anything and do anything and get any book and any key in the world, if he could practice Bren’s kind of skill and just use his head.
That was one point in its favor.
Having those two Atageini bodyguards watching him and reporting to his mother and to great-uncle Tatiseigi—that was a problem.
But he could get past problems. He could depend on Jegari and Antaro for anything.
He drew a deep, deep breath, contemplating his sketch of the ship.
Now that he thought about what his father could do if he wanted to, this could work out. It could very well work out.
3
Breakfast, and Banichi was back—just after dawn, a towering and unexpected shadow in the dowager’s inner hall. He stopped, he gave a sketchy bow; Bren did, on his way to the dowager’s table.
And kept at bay the human desire to fling arms about his bodyguard, in sheer relief.
“One is extremely delighted to see you, Nichi-ji.” Ever so properly. “One is ever so greatly relieved.”
“One is extremely delighted to be back, nandi.” Banichi looked uncharacteristically tired, and was a little hoarse—one could imagine long talk, or loud talking, both unlikely in Banichi, but it had been an extraordinary week.
“Did Tano and Algini come back, too?”
“They are still at the Guild,” Banichi said, drawing that opaque curtain on all information within that organization, and telling him no more than that. It was worrisome. He wanted the rest of his staff back, with all his heart he wanted them, and considering Algini’s high rank in the Guild, he was by no means sure he would get them back. But he had Banichi safe and sound, and equally important, Jago had her partner back. Both facts made him feel ever so much happier in the start of a chaotic day.
“Do go rest,” he said. “The dowager’s staff is packing and moving for us, with help from down the hall. I don’t know if you may have heard.” It was almost impossible that Banichi had not picked up, from Jago, if no one else, that they were changing residences, but he delivered the information himself, for courtesy. “We are to remove to Lord Tatiseigi’s apartment this afternoon, but no one will disturb your sleep, on my explicit order, and one is certain the dowager will concur.”